CloudBees acquires Codeship's SaaS-based CI/CD offering to broaden its portfolio for small and large customers, and further consolidates the DevOps tools market.

CloudBees' Codeship acquisition adds a one-stop CI/CD to customers as an alternative to Jenkins, and also consolidates their DevOps choices.

CloudBees, which is based in San Jose, Calif., has acquired Boston-based Codeship and its software as a service (SaaS) offerings for an undisclosed amount to bolster its position in the continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) space. The move reflects the market's selection of, and need to rapidly simplify around, narrowed preferences for certain DevOps technologies and methods.

"As IT and cloud architects seek a direct and clear path from requirements to deployment, they want the de facto market leading approaches and they want the integration of them out of the equation," said Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions in Gilford, N.H. "This vendor consolidation marks a move toward a more mature path to holistic DevOps, one that works across the mainstream hybrid IT continuum."

The Codeship acquisition gives CloudBees an easy, self-service DevOps option to round out its range of CI/CD products, from cloud self-service to on premises, self-managed and customizable. Large enterprises run Jenkins at scale for CI/CD, but many smaller companies don't need a customized solution and prefer a SaaS model. The addition of Codeship's tools to its enterprise Jenkins assets broadens CloudBees' support across both user bases.

Sacha Labourey

"I don't think one is right and the other is wrong; I just think the type of use case is pretty different," said Sacha Labourey, CEO and co-founder of CloudBees. "This doesn't mean we are moving away from Jenkins. And likewise, we are not going to try to retrofit Codeship and suddenly have Jenkins as the core of it."

In fact, the two approaches are complementary, Labourey said. Teams that are happy with Codeship will be able to use it forever as is, or they can start with Codeship and migrate to the CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise edition.

Founded in 2011, Codeship has more than 2,400 paying customers and over 100,000 developers using its Codeship Basic and Codeship Pro offerings, said Moritz Plassnig, Codeship's founder and CEO.

Consolidation in the DevOps market

CloudBees' Codeship acquisition is the latest example of a DevOps market crying out for consolidation to simplify users' choices, but it's still crowded.

CloudBees having a broader platform is good, but it is kind of like Atlassian buying Trello. We already have something like that as opposed to buying a release automation tool or any other part of the pipeline.
Thomas Murphyanalyst, Gartner

"What we're seeing here is what I think is the bootstrap of a wave of consolidation taking place in the DevOps space," Labourey said. He adds that a company that wants a DevOps stack today would have to buy from up to 20 vendors, which is not sustainable.

The DevOps tool market has seen some consolidation, spurred by a glut of capital floating around to fund deals, and this deal isn't unique, said Thomas Murphy, a Gartner analyst in Spokane, Wash. "I think CloudBees having a broader platform is good, but it is kind of like Atlassian buying Trello. We already have something like that as opposed to buying a release automation tool or any other part of the pipeline."

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